 My name is Srinivas. I am a civil engineer. I'm an interdisciplinary researcher working on cities, data and internet. I was primarily at this lab which was funded by Ministry of Urban Development a while ago called the Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab at IIT Madras. So, well the talk is about smart cities. Well, I'm going to talk about cities and the mission. Let's not get into the philosophy of smart cities. That's a whole different topic altogether. So, how does city administration work when you're talking about payments and cities? What is it that the cities do that the administration does? They provide you certain utilities for which the cities charge. Could be transport, could be electricity, could be water boat, bunch of issues which they're, sorry, not issues, utilities but the 18 of them where, which the constitutional amendment, the 74th constitutional amendment lets city administrations charge citizens. So, where are the opportunities here? So, because most of these transactions are happening in cash with demontization every government agency is trying to get money online. So, the whole smart cities mission, they're setting up these special purpose vehicles with smart city CEOs who are going to be the agencies which are going to collect all these taxes from people. So, from an estimate by RBI, this whole sector is worth 62 lakh crores. Sorry, I missed the crores but this is an estimate which was for the report for Bharat Bill Payment System which is what my talk is about, the entire utility payments. So, when you're talking about utility payments and city governments, local bodies, what are the barriers and what are the opportunities altogether? The first issue is procurement guidelines. It's not easy for you to sell something to a government agency. They have their own systems in place, they have their own procurement rules, they have a huge standard process. It's really hard to bypass them but these whole SPVs which are being set up, they are trying to overlook it, looking at products not just the traditional tendering process, they're ready to pay you monthly so long so you provide an end to end solution. So, that's a good opportunity for you guys. But one major issue is there are no standards. When UPI came, it became a standard for everybody to exchange money. When you look at the entire financial space, it's the governments which have been pushing standards across payments. When you look at local bodies, it's the end of the chain and there has been no capacity building in cities and local governments. So, there are no standards. When you're talking about smart cities, there are also no standards localized to the cities which is one barrier for any startup to enter the space but also an opportunity. You can push industry standards, you can design them or you can look at the West where they are still discussing them. Actually, there are no standards in the entire whole smart city dialogue. People in the West are still also trying to figure out. So, there are 100 cities which are waiting out there which need solutions and expect some announcements to this budget for the past two years. There's nothing much happened in the smart cities from a perspective of money being spent. So, this year there should be a really good growth budget allocated to cities and whom to approach. So, we probably have a solution to provide payment services for cities. The best ones are these smart city CEOs. If you're going to the traditional old municipalities, it's going to be a bit problem. I'm not saying it's not the best way but these people are more open. When you talk about the business aspect, right? So, you get one city as the RBI report says, most of the payments happen in 20 cities. You even implement your system in one city at scale. It will break even. You're looking at a lakhs of purchases happening every day at the end of the month. So, there are few existing national standards which have not been used at the local body levels, at city levels. The first one is the national common mobility card which was approved in March 2016 after around six years of consultations within public transportation agencies and metro agencies of the country. And that is the national electronic toll collection standard, FASTAC, which is promoted by national highway authorities of India. And you got UPI, you can definitely use UPI for utility payments. But the way it is structured, I believe it would be difficult. The best one, the best alternative is the Bharat Bill Payment System, which has been announced, which is out there open. I don't know how many startups here have heard of this or even using this. But Paytm certainly is doing it. They're doing utility payments for water boat services, electricity bill payments. They're looking at gas bill payments. So, if you're looking at utility payments, the Bharat Bill Payment System is the one you need to look into and which hasn't been used, which hasn't been explored by many startups yet. The industry is still evolving in the space. So, yeah, so coming back to the standard on common mobility cards, right? So, if you go to every city, you'll have two to three cards for each mode of transportation. So, in Bangalore, BMR CL has one card, BMDC is coming up with a new card. In Bombay, you'll have three to four cards within each mode, train, the metro, the mono, then you got BEST. So, these weren't really interoperable. So, they thought they need an interoperable card, which is accessible for everybody in the country at any point of the time. So, they came up with this national common mobility card, which is acceptable design, which is designed to be acceptable at every place, tolls, parking lots, ferries, taxi, trains, buses. This is being tested for the first time in Bangalore through BMDC in two routes in the next month. They are trying to do it in two routes of airport buses, I believe. You're going to hear more from them. But as a standard, it can be extended to anything. When you look at parking, right? You can look at mall parking. So, the payment bridge, the API bridge can be used in private sector, though it has been designed for public transportation primarily. But nobody has tried implementing them in private sector, which is an entire sector to be tapped into. You could look at taxis. I don't believe whether Ola or Uber is actually exploiting this, but there's a whole sector up for people to grab. The other one, Fastag. So, it's already active. This is one of the first contactless payments. When you talk about other pay and being contactless, right? This is the first contactless payment, if I'm not wrong. And it's already active in 70% of the toll plazas in the country. Paytm has a deal with NHAI. It's primarily dominated by the banks. You need to open a separate account when you want to get an RFID tag which you paste on your cars to go past to the tolls. You won't be stopped. The gate automatically opens when you're near the toll gate, when it reads the RFID tag. Again, Fastag being used for parking lots hasn't been really explored by companies. So, the national standards exist and you could use these to open up new markets. So, coming back to utility bill payments services. So, Bharat Bill Payments Systems, this was announced back in 2015. A report was published on the entire idea of how it's going to be utilized for utility bill payments. Again, NPCI is going to be the central unit which is going to monitor it. But you're going to have non-banking entities and banking entities which will be other processing units under whom you'll have agents. The entire idea of Bharat Bill Payments Systems comes from ESEVA, which was introduced in Hyderabad back in 2007. If you're not familiar with this, these were government sponsored centers where you could walk in with your bill. You can pay the bill with the extra 10 rupee service tax. So, back in 2001, when the internet wasn't really available, they explored of providing these civic centers where you could just walk and pay the bill. Now, this is just going online. So, again, the bunch of avenues where you can explore this. What are the business models and opportunities? When you're talking about governments and businesses, right? It's primarily a partnership. You have something called the public private partnerships where you take a cut. The local bodies do not have the money to give you some money up front. So, what you do is you charge extra 10 rupees on every utility payment. If you're talking about water bill, charge 10 bucks for processing fee. So, it's usually a partnership. The things which you can explore is the people-public-private partnership. That is something which the prime minister had a vision where you're going to involve local people. So, this is something which needs to be explored as a business model. I don't believe any company is doing this in India yet. And you have all the traditional methods of being a B2B service or a B2G service. But there are opportunities for you to develop products for consumers. So, I'm going to show some of those examples. So, there's this app called Get My Parking, which basically lets you book a parking slot and it's a product. So, they're trying to use Fastag or NCMC to actually let you pay for your parking beforehand. And they're also providing the services for cities as a service. And you also have this app called Riddler, which lets you book a bus ticket for a public transport in Bombay, for BST, for Mumbai Metro, as well as Navi Mumbai Transport. Bombay has around eight transport agencies just within the city. So, there are product startups which are coming up, but from a services point of view, you can look at traffic offence collection and you can even potentially look at congestion pricing, which hasn't really been explored. So, when you look at traffic offence collection, again, cities need end to end solution. It's not just about the payment. It's more about the tech, which can help show you where a bus is, which can help you show a point where you can park your lot, whether the lot is available or not. So, the market is pretty new. It's evolving. And there's a whole lot of money to be made, standards to be made. But I see no one pushing it. I think Paytm is going to try pushing things soon on Bharat Pay. But I believe there is a lot of scope for other startups to innovate in the entire sector. There's a whole sector which needs to be explored. And yeah, that's pretty much it. If you have any questions, do we have any questions? Oh, there's one at the back there. Is there any place where you can find this current open data initiatives, either state or national? So, you see the startup right riddler. So, they use bus data to tell you where the bus is. They actually crowdsource it. So, when you're looking at data to build products, right, you need data of bill payments, you need to provide a service for a consumer to know what is bill is before you can pay. Governments are not going to share the data right away to you. The best method is crowdsourcing and generating yourself. There are few cities which are trying to explore open data policies where they're trying to give out this data. Surat, Pune and Hyderabad, Telangana government have three policies right now where they're sharing the data. So, you can approach them through this. Do we have any other questions? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, the model. So, we're talking about people public-private partnership, right? So, crowdsourcing. So, I believe in some sense they are also doing this. They're generating data of where the bus is because the bus agency has no GPS units on their network. They are involving people into a business aspect. They're making money by selling tickets to the people but they're also taking their own data to provide the city as a service of where the buses are. So, the models which can be explored, which need to be explored but they're not, there has been no success rates. I mean, if you look at this, this is a pilot too. It hasn't been really scaled. These are all new startups which are just coming out. Any other questions? I was just trying to understand what's the kind of effort government bodies are putting in engaging with the developer community or with startups, you know? I've read about workshops in sandboxes and all of that but is there a, is there actually a method to it or is it just a random? So, it should be a dialogue, right? They cannot just, they cannot just reach out to you if you don't respond, okay? So, no, in the case for NPCF, for example, they held a workshop and a hackathon in February last year. Are there more instances of that happening for, you know, for urban planning? So, NASCARM organizes lot of smart city hackathons but they're probably not telling you what all the places, avenues are there for you to look into, right? You need to look into the problem. So, when I say models, right? Emergency transportation is a major issue. It's a major issue in Bangalore because of your own traffic. Nobody, no city organization is going to come to you and say, solve this for us. It's, you need to look at the problems and approach them. They are doing their part of listening to you at these places and these avenues but the idea is you need to look, you need to be affected with the problem to solve some of them. I'm a civil engineer. I know how a city works. I know what are these protocols and you, I have the background to look into it but unless you look at the problem, there is nothing much the cities can help you with. See, NPC has no role in this. They're just providing a bridge. It's a deal between you and a city government and this is all up for grabs. I have a question sort of before we go to any other questions. I mean, I recently moved to Bangalore from Delhi and I'm trying to use public transport here but the one issue has been that it's not easily navigable. I mean, of course, you know, I can read all the signs and I sort of really have an idea of the roots. Do you think there's scope for city government? I mean, something like BMTC to tie up with the developer to prepare to create something like an Uber for buses so that you know which is the nearest bus coming. When is it coming? Because one issue that, at least for me, the three or four times that I had to use it as the timetable says buses coming in two minutes, but 10 minutes later, there's no trace of a bus. So is there a way for like, you know, cities to collaborate with the developer and say, here we're going to come up with an app. But not only do you know when the bus is, but we'll tell you exactly like something like what Riddler is doing. Yeah. So to respond to your question, there is already an app by BMTC, which gives you live locations of buses. It's not being promoted well because it doesn't function well. Okay. But what BMTC is doing now is it's going to share its data to any developer. So Google, Paytm, Uber, Ola, any company can show where the buses. If you can't catch a bus, catch a ride. Okay. So the data is going to come out sometime next month when they're implementing the national common multi card. They already have a policy up in place. So you can definitely do that. You can build your own hacks. You can build apps with your watch apps in your terminal. So the data is up for grabs. Do we have, do you have any last questions? No? Okay. Thank you Srinivas. Please give him a round of applause.